Quick Summary: Fires can only be started with Kindling. Individual animals can no longer be cooked or smoked without skinning them for meat first. More details below…

This update introduces the new Fire Lighting and Skinning systems! The processes of lighting fires and obtaining edible meat from animals has been broken down into two new mechanics. To start a fire, you now need to gather wood to craft Kindling. When you have Kindling equipped, you can use it on a fire to begin using a basic wooden hand drill to light your tinder. After a number of continuous and successful attempts you will have lit your fire.

To obtain edible meat all animals now need to be skinned. Individual animals can no longer be cooked or smoked without skinning them for meat first. To skin an animal you will need to craft a Knife. When you have your Knife equipped, you can use it to interact with a dead animal to ‘skin’ them, gathering meat. Different animals have different sizes and amounts of meats you can gather from them. All animals are now tied into this new system: fish, crabs, birds, boar, snakes, etc. These new systems will be tied into your skills in the future things to affect things like success rates and availability.

The paddling animation is also back in this update. As we’ve mentioned before, the paddle is no longer a unique item that you carry around, but is part of operating the Life Raft vehicle. The paddle will equip when you operate your Life Raft.

Weather has also been restored. There’s no new work on the weather as yet, but it is back and functioning which should help with your water situation!

There’s been some smaller changes behind the scenes in an effort to track down/alleviate some users problems with picking up interactable items like buckets. Please let us know if you’re still experiencing problems.

It’s worth mentioning that this update is a little smaller this week as we took a week off for personal time to refresh and regroup. We’re also working on a new roadmap so we’ll keep you posted!

CHANGES
– Added support for item specific interactions, knife skinning, fire lighting materials, etc.
– Restored Paddle animations.
– Restored Weather.
– Reduced Grass popping.
– Reverted Torch back to an item that needs to be equipped.
– Renamed Water Collector and Water Still to Water Distiller and Solar Still.

NEW CONTENT
– Added new Skinning system!
To skin an animal you must have a knife equipped. You can then use the Knife on a dead animal to skin it. In the future, skinning will be tied into your skills. If you have the required skinning skills, you will succeed and be rewarded with meat and other items. If you don’t have the skills required, you will fail. Repeatedly attempting and failing to skin an animal will result in you destroying the animal, leaving you with useless scraps. You will unlock the ability to skin larger animals as your skinning skills increase.

– Added new Fire Lighting system!
Camp fires now take a bit of effort to light. You will need to craft the new Kindling item. When you have Kindling equipped, you can use it on a Camp Fire to attempt to start a fire. Starting a fire takes a number of attempts and has a failure rate which will later be tied into your fire lighting skills. To successfully light a fire you must repeatedly use the hand drill without any failures. Camp Fires can be extinguished by interacting with them with no items in your hand.